Eastern Bloc emigration and defection

Eastern Bloc emigration and
defection was a point of controversy during the
Cold War. After
World War II, emigration restrictions were imposed by countries in the
Eastern Bloc, which consisted of the
Soviet Union and its
satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. Legal emigration was in most cases only possible in order to reunite families or to allow members of minority ethnic groups to return to their homelands.

Eastern Bloc governments argued that strict limits to emigration were necessary to prevent a
brain drain. The United States and Western European governments argued that they represented a violation of human rights. Despite the restrictions,
defections to the West occurred.

After
East Germany tightened its zonal occupation border with
West Germany, the city sector border between
East Berlin and
West Berlin became a loophole through which defection could occur. This was closed with the erection of the
Berlin Wall in 1961. Thereafter, emigration from the
Eastern Bloc was effectively limited to illegal defections, ethnic emigration under bilateral agreements, and a small number of other cases.

Conditions in the Eastern Bloc

Throughout the Eastern Bloc, both in the Soviet Union and the rest of the Bloc, the Russian SFSR was given prominence, and referred to as the naibolee vydajuščajasja nacija (the most prominent nation) and the rukovodjaščij narod (the leading people).[8] The Soviets promoted the reverence of Russian actions and characteristics, and the construction of Soviet Communist structural hierarchies in the other countries of the Eastern Bloc.[8]

The defining characteristic of communism implemented in the
Eastern Bloc was the unique symbiosis of the state with society and the economy, resulting in politics and economics losing their distinctive features as autonomous and distinguishable spheres.[16] Initially, Stalin directed systems that rejected Western institutional characteristics of
market economies, democratic governance (dubbed "
bourgeois democracy" in Soviet parlance) and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the state.[17] The Soviets mandated expropriation and estatization of private property.[18]

The Soviet-style "replica regimes" that arose in the Bloc not only reproduced Soviet
command economies, but also adopted the brutal methods employed by
Joseph Stalin and Soviet secret police to suppress real and potential opposition.[18] Communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc saw even marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as a potential threat because of the bases underlying Communist power therein.[19] The suppression of dissidence and opposition was a central prerequisite for the security of Communist power within the Eastern Bloc, though the degree of opposition and dissident suppression varied by country and time throughout the Bloc.[19]

In addition, media in the Eastern Bloc served as an organ of the state, completely reliant on, and subservient to, the ruling Communist parties, with radio and television organizations being state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the ruling Communist party.[20] Furthermore, the Eastern Bloc experienced economic mis-development by central planners resulting in those countries following a path of extensive rather than intensive development, and lagged far behind their western European counterparts in per capita Gross Domestic Product.[21] Empty shelves in shops even in East Germany provided an open reminder of the inaccuracy of propaganda regarding purported magnificent and uninterrupted economic progress.[22]